Posted on 04/15/2010 2:15:26 AM PDT by Daffynition
They say a man's home is his castle, but does that include the right to turn it into an eyesore?
On a quiet side street south of Daytona Beach, Robert Hodges' corner house is painted randomly with purple, yellow, orange, green and pink. A toilet and rusting bike stand by a tree, old pieces of a wood deck are scattered and a large sand mound is decorated with skis, golf clubs, plastic ducks and Christmas ornaments. Criss-crossing the front yard are several clotheslines featuring boxers, a pair of hot-pink feathery skivvies and colorful extra-large bras.
"Oh, yes, it's beautiful!" declares Hodges, a snowbird retiree from Memphis, Tenn. who prefers the moniker Prince Mongo. "It's absolutely gorgeous."
And it's his own personal protest.
Upset at complaints by neighbors over a wood deck that prompted county officials to cite him for a code violation, he transformed a $300,000 beachside home into a wildly provocative property that stands out as much as he does.
Prince Mongo, who eagerly tells you he is 333 and from the planet Zambodia, joins the colorful cast of other Central Florida characters who used their homes as a canvas for protest, to the point of becoming neighborhood nuisances.
The late Grover Walker painted his Winter Park home a wild red, white and blue, with massive slogans and a giant American flag flying upside-down on a 90-foot flagpole. The family hosted concerts and rallies, with loudspeakers, sirens and military surplus spotlights to protest a psychiatric diagnosis that barred him from receiving veterans benefits. Seminole County's "junkman," Alan Wayne Davis, went to prison rather than removing antique aircraft parts and a giant sculpture of a human buttocks from his yard near Altamonte Springs.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
yor very welcomed....i could sit and watch these people day in and day out....i am one that trys to find the humorous side in everything.....lol...
"There's great power in my hair; it helps protect me from demons trying to get near me."
You just KNOW this dude has every Sun Ra record made.
If Christo can put pink parasols on islands, a curtain across Rifle Gap, and the whole curtain thingy in Central Park, surely this guy can paint his house as he wants. He isn't using public land, public funds (at least outrageous amounts, anyway), and I have seen far worse eyesores in museums.
Now, if he was to start painting the rest of the neighborhood, that would be cause for concern.
For everyone who ever hated their homeowner’s association...
Mongo only pawn in game of life.
Like a child, if Mongo can't have his way, then he will make everyone around him miserable. He's thrown a visual tantrum. What a jerk!
What a riot! I would love to have a beer with this character.
"He's not dumb. He knows the law and knows that he can't be cited for hanging 100 pieces of women's underwear, so he's pushing the limits of that," Wagner said. "But the neighbors are afraid of him."
Idiots! This problem is very simple to sort out.
All they need to do is send him a candygram!
Well, not really drugs and education. For those of us who have been in and around Memphis for many years, we have heard that he bought “crazy insurance” so that if he ever lost his mind he would get a large sum of money. It was to protect his businesses. (He had a pizza parlour, but not sure if that was before or after he “went crazy”.)
Wouldn’t you know it, he went crazy a short while after he got the insurance... The story goes that he’s had to act crazy all these years to keep from being charged with insurance fraud.
He’s run for Mayor of Memphis in almost every election in the past 30 years. Including just a few months ago. Memphis is tired of him, so he’s getting more attention now in Florida, perhaps.
Gail, do you have a Memphis ping list?
If I was his neighbor, I’d just tell anyone looking for my house, “It is to the right of the one with wild paint - you can’t miss it!”
It wouldn’t bother me, provided he didn’t try to make me follow his example.
ping
Or keeping up with the Joneses! ;)
"In the mid 1970's my family lived on Linden, just a block or so from Prince Mongo's home (he has now moved to east Memphis). On Halloween I used to love to go trick or treat at his house because he had a skull and crossbones on his door, and I think it may have been real bones. I also clearly remember my mom telling me not to go near his home, but I did it anyway. One day he had a crew of hippie folks digging a grave in his front yard and my brother and I asked if we could help. They gave us some shovels and we asked "why are we digging a grave in Prince Mongo's front yard?" Their answer was "so he can bury himself alive". Our answer was "O.K." and we all kept digging."
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